Intervention for Hire
A while back at a Cato forum on humanitarian interventions Nicholas Gvosdev tossed off one of the most outside the box foreign policy ideas I'd heard in a good long time. Gvosdev's against such interventions for pretty standard "realist" reasons but, he observed, there's lots of civil society agitation for action in, say, Darfur and maybe the groups doing the agitating could just hire private military contractors to get the job done. Rebecca Ulam Weiner fleshes the idea out a bit in The Boston Globe Ideas section. This is, I think, worth thinking about.
My initial objection was that these groups have pretty bad human rights records, so this would be a bad idea. Upon reflection, that objection seems wrongheaded to me. PMCs' human rights records are bad because they have no incentive to be scrupulous about this stuff. If there was money to be made getting hired by do-gooders, though, the do-gooders would presumably care about your brand's human rights record. This might not only lead to better behavior than one would expect on humanitarian operations, but also do something to clean up PMC behavior on other missions so as not to lose out in the humanitarian market.
On top of that, I really do think it's necessary for people to think outside the box a bit on this topic. The 1990s-vintage debate on humanitarian interventions now strikes me as a bit misguided. The main premise of the whole conversation was that the United States had a lot of "excess capacity" on the military front. This came about because the Cold War ended, reducing the demand for American military activity, but political pressures prevented congress from cutting the military back to the bone. As a result, this very abstract question about whether or not it was a good idea to use military force for purely humanitarian ends made sense to ask. And I think the correct answer was "yes."
In 2006, however, the excess capacity is gone. I think we should expect that the situation prevailing from 1945-1991 and then again from 2002-present is going to be the normal one. If a country does have spare troops on hand, I think it does make sense to deploy them to halt a genocide or what have you. But I don't think it's realistic to expect a country to deliberately oversize its military for the purpose of mounting these things.
That said, the idea of having NGOs mount these operations on their own is a bit troubling. I keep having visions of things degenerating to a Snow Crash or Jennifer Government type situation with rival western nonprofits hiring rival private armies to wage proxy wars in the third world. Generally speaking, if you look at Africa's endemic instability and lack of state capacity, it's a bit hard to reach the conclusion that introducing more mercenaries into the mix is going to be the answer. Weiner's idea seems to be not that NGOs would hire mercenaries but that the UN would, which may make more sense.
Why do the do-gooders have to hire mercenaries? Why don't they do the work themselves? If Amnesty International (for example) was so exercised about human rights in Darfur, or Tibet, or whereever, let them pick up some rifles and go fix the situation.
April 26, 2006 7:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Matt, I greatly admire your work, but every now and then you post something that leads me to believe you're staying up all night taking hits from a bong painted to resemble the USS Enterprise in the basement of the Cato Institute trying a little too hard to think outside the box.
See, many parts of Africa are already living through the sorts of libertopian social structures that Stephenson rhapsodizes about in Snow Crash. Most observers have concluded that Africa suffers from too many privately-funded mercenaries, not too few. Even such experienced mercenary employers as the CIA had a difficult time penetrating the market and making inroads against the stiff local competition in the 1980s.
If Doctors Without Borders decides to hire a regiment of Doctors With Heavy Artillery and starts capping some Janjaweed ass, it might improve their fundraising efforts in rural America and they would surely sell the movie rights to Hollywood, but I suspect their results would be even less satisfactory than the CIA's. So the do-gooders hire some mercenaries who say they'll defend civilians and promote democracy... what happens next? They won't have any more control over the situation than you would have if you sent $100 to the guy in Nigeria who wants you to invest in his sure-fire moneymaking scheme. They'd have even less ability to control their mercenaries than Reagan had over the nun-raping death squads freedom fighters in Central America.
Just sayin'.
April 26, 2006 8:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, let's imagine a world where there are private military contractors funded completely with private dollars, where the fortune 400 routinely sell of large portions of their assets to finance humanitarian interventions. Now imagine that everyone had a pony.
Say it would take 15,000 US caliber troops to stop the violence in Darfur. The Pentagon has an annual budget of 400 billion and roughly 4 million soldiers & employees, for an annual TCO of $100,000. That leaves you with $1.5 billion annual price tag, and probably more, since PMC's have significantly higher salaries than soldiers. So, say $5B. Nobody but governments has that kind of money in liquid form lying around. The Gates foundation pledges hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, but that's over many years, and no one is in the same ballpark in terms of philanthropic giving. Is Warren Buffet going to sell 5% of his net worth to stop the genocide? Is Bono going to hold fundraising concerts for the next 30 years to pay for it? The total budget for the UN is less than $4Billion, which of course includes current food aid, mission in ... well, wherever the UN is these days - Kosovo, East Timor, etc. Plus where are they going to get the tanks? It's not like governments would even be happy with entities like NGOs owning them.
I'm all for outside the box thinking, which is sorely needed, as you point out, but this is just wishcasting
April 26, 2006 8:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunately, Matt, I think this idea has already been tried (see here: http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060320&s=zengerle032006) and found wanting. There are real advantages in this realm to being a country and constraints on what nonprofits can do here.
April 26, 2006 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Doctors With Heavy Artillery reminds me of the names of warships in Iain Banks' 'Culture' universe-- the Grey Area, the It's My Mother's Fault, the Now Look What You Made Me Do...
April 26, 2006 9:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think it's realistic to expect a country to deliberately oversize its military for the purpose of mounting these things.
To say that a military kept at the ready for humanitarian interventions is oversized is to presume that there is some "right" size, that can be discerned without reference to policy decisions.
If a country decides that, as a matter of policy, they want humanitarian interventions, then such an army is "just right." If a country decides that standing armies are to be avoided, because they lead to tyranny, any army is too big. Right now, America seems to have decided that it wants an Army just big enough to blow shit up, but without the capacity to prevent chaos. And they've got it.
April 26, 2006 9:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Say it would take 15,000 US caliber troops to stop the violence in Darfur. The Pentagon has an annual budget of 400 billion and roughly 4 million soldiers & employees, for an annual TCO of $100,000.
False methodology. The reason the TCO is that high for the Pentagon is because that includes the cost of training. The competitive advantage of a PMC is that they don't do the training thing: they scoop up your above-average 27-year-old staff sergeant from the Army or Marines and get the benefit of his multi-hundred thousand dollars' (or more) worth of advanced training in weapons, tactics, special operations, and the like, that has already been paid for by Uncle Sam. Not to mention his combat experience if he's already been rotated through Iraq or Afghanistan. Oh, and the TCO also can be reduced by the external costs that the PMC can also avoid because it doesn't have the obligations the Pentagon does: running world-class medical and dental care systems for its employees, housing, pensions, and much else besides.
Let's not forget your 100K TCO also factors in the costs of all sorts of things PMCs don't need for their operations: heavy bombers, aircraft carriers, satellite launching facilities...the only thing a PMC is, say, Darfur would be required to be is somewhat motorized infantry. No need to pay for an air force or navy, or even for M1A2 tanks.
April 26, 2006 12:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
All hail the impending massacre.
April 26, 2006 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
On the other hand they might need a little more firepower to hold off a squadron of WZ-9s.
April 26, 2006 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
An idea made for fun writing, but horribly flawed.
PMC's, ranging anywhere from former SAS to fat Americans with rambo fantasies, are all fairly small organizations. Peacekeeping, on the other hand, is a very manpower intensive activity.
So in deciding to employ mercenaries for peacekeeping, you're faced with an unpleasant choice: Spend more money than real soldiers would cost (as we are doing in Iraq) for limited effect, or just hire anyone willing to carry a rifle in order to build sufficient manpower - and mercenaries of that caliber would worsen any war-torn environment. The people of Darfur are tired of fearing disorganized bands of armed men.
Both decisions are counterproductive, the former being more costly than peacekeeping operations which are politically challenging to organize in part due to cost, and the latter actually making the problem on the ground worse.
April 26, 2006 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hummm. How about this humanitarian intervention with private troops?
Three or four Divisions of Liberal Moonbats against a company of 101st Fighting Keyboarders. Put them (and us and US) out of their misery.
I'm sure Oregon could raise a brigade for the cause: (motto: Green, Clean, Liberal and Madder Than Hell)
April 26, 2006 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
On top of that, I really do think it's necessary for people to think outside the box a bit on this topic.
The box you are talking about here, Matt, is that one that contains anarchy and promotes the rule of law in the long run.
What Gvosdev is talking about is a private army staffed with mercenaries. I always thought that the existence of such private forces were generally regarded - except by the most radical libertarian survivalist nut jobs - as threats to, you know, ... law, peace, international security, civilization!
The theory of modern democratic goverment assumes that the legitimate use of violence lies entirely in the hands of the state, and that the government of that state lies in the hands of the people. Of course, you might say that we can choose to delegate that power and regulate it. Sure, we can write all sorts of rules. But laws without the power to enforce the lawighs are only a shadow of genuine governance - not the real thing. People who control the means to make war, and then foolishly hand them over to private groups, are asking for trouble and enabling tyranny. I don't want to see Halliburton or George Soros with an army at his disposal.
I suspect the proposal also runs afoul of international law, as currently understood. Weren't some of the anti-mercenary conventions enacted with an eye toward the problems mercenaries posed for African states in particular?
April 26, 2006 3:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
The theory of modern democratic goverment assumes that the legitimate use of violence lies entirely in the hands of the state, and that the government of that state lies in the hands of the people.
Well, in fairness here, the hypothetical PMCs would be operating in pretty war-torn parts of the world. It's quite possible that the rough sense of justice meted out by a PMC force would be better than, say, genocide in Rwanda or the Sudan. That's a low bar to meet, yes, but we're talking about stopping genocide here.
WRT the critique of the $100,000 per private soldier year figure, we have to look at work opportunities for the hypothetical workforce. I think it's quite likely that salary alone would cost $60K plus. To say nothing of very large transportation costs, equipment, etc. Yes, they're not buying satellites, but aren't they going to need some sort of basing, somehow? In Bosnia this was handled by contracts with e.g. Halliburton, right? I still think 1.5B+ is a reasonable figure, and for everyone besides Bill Gates (and I'm including Warren Buffet), that's a huge sum of money.
Senator Dirsken had a point when he said "A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money". Because discussion of the federal budget revolve around the ten-year cost of mammoth tax cuts (hundreds of billions or trillions) Democratic health care plans (the same), we get to thinking that spending $5B on this program or that program isn't that much. But outside of Medicare and maybe student lones, it's a sizeable portion of most agencies budgets.
April 26, 2006 11:06 PM | Reply | Permalink